Thursday, December 24, 2015

More Fun than a Barrel of 'Em

Ann Telnaes is getting some flak for an animated cartoon she posted on the Washington Post this week -- the still at left pretty much sums it up- -- before the Postunposted both the cartoon and her explanation of it.

She drew it in response to a campaign video from Ted Cruz (R-1953) in which Cruz reads supposed children's stories to his wife and two daughters. As Cruz reads The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails, his 7-year-old pipes up, "I know that what I'll do, she said, I'll use my own server, and noone will be the wiser!"

Shakespeare it ain't. It isn't even remotely Dr. Seuss. It comes close, however, to being emetic.

Clay Bennett sums up the cartoonists' response to the furore, drawing Cruz saying, "Leave my daughters out of this!" while dragging them into the spotlight.

That being said, there really is no up side to lampooning any politician's school-age daughters. Anyone who has ever had a daughter -- or a younger sister, for that matter -- is going to sympathize with the aggrieved politician, no matter how he or she has used his offspring in what commercial, billboard, tweet, or vine.

Teapublicans have occasionally held up Sasha and Malia Obama for scorn (Elizabeth Lauten comes to mind), and they have been rightfully criticized for it. I declined to pile on then teenaged Jenna Bush after her OWI citations, although I had no such qualms about lampooning the daughters of Dick Cheney. They were both adults at the time, and I think that's a good place to draw the line.

So, yeah, I don't think I'd have drawn Ted Cruz's daughters as performing monkeys. But I'm not going to say that Telnaes was out of line.